>always been fascinated about suffering in life, reading endless books of different life experiences, reading about pre-civilization and post-civilization and biology
>fascinated how some with nothing are happy and some with everything are sad
>confused how ive lived a relatively easy life yet still have negative thoughts of fear and certain situations im not at all prepared for
>reckon that the reason why we have fear in the first place all falls under the broader umbrella of our fear of death
>for example the reason why we fear judgement of others, no matter how benign, is because not being accepted to the tribe meant certain death back in pre-civilization
>so instead of trying to compartmentalize that specific fear and truly internalize the finality of death and to be okay with that prospect should mean I have gotten rid of all my other fears by proxy
>but getting rid of my fear of death and continuing to live a life with an apathetic foundation would make me no different than a criminal who abides by his vices, or a nihilist who considers taking their own life
>so living with values is paramount
>but wouldn't having values mean still having attachment to this world?
>so what's worth being attached to?
>what values will I die for?
>and why is it the negative opinions of others still get to me, despite consciously knowing their impudence is of a barking dog?
>and how much of the comfort I'm afforded in this life is enabling me to think like this? will I truly abide to this mode of thinking if I were to live a precarious life?
>figure I need to try and control my mind
>try meditation to assuage my negative feelings
>focusing on my breathing
>negative thoughts still in the background, even if I try detaching from it
>still feel symptoms like a headache or a heart full of malice; a dull feeling in my chest
So what exactly are my next steps? I want to talk more about the ego and anti-natalism but I'm already struggling as is maintain brevity in this one post.

bruh just fucking sit there and close your eyes nigga, just stare at a wall or something lmao

>>24548032 (OP)
>>24548038
Meditation never helped me decrease the constant negative thoughts at all. It doesn't work.

>>24548032 (OP)
You're on the right track. It comes down to examining your value system. The default value system of the universe is perpetuation (which in humans more or less manifests as pleasure = good, pain = bad). You should examine this value system and see if it leads to suffering or not. At the same time you should take on the value system prescribed by the Buddha (virtue, in the form of the 8 precepts, sense restraint, etc. the gradual training). You should try to evaluate an action you are considering not in terms of pleasure and pain but whether it conforms with the spirit of the precepts (which is dispassion vs. craving). Anything that you know (by past experience or simple logical reasoning) will lead to or perpetuate craving, you should not do. Everything else is permissible. The actions forbidden by the precepts are those which always lead to or perpetuate craving, hence why you can start there. But the key to progress is to examine your own experience, your every day actions, using this new value system. The cycles of trying and failing and trying again that you do, the stronger your mind and your will become, the more clear the nature of that flawed value system and the benefit of the new system.

>>24548032 (OP)
Go Outside and savor natural beauty wherever you can find it. It can lead to what can only be described as romantic love for life and the universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnT8vJ3_cSc

https://archive.org/details/simsane-9.1-vyrith

https://dn720005.ca.archive.org/0/items/co-creative-evolution-final/Co_Creative_Evolution_1.05.pdf

https://pastebin.com/vHKeTau2

I read your post and am going to courage you away from spirituality and philosophy, to focus more on the body. You listed feeling sensations such as headaches and a dull feeling in your chest. Try exploring these sensations and not focusing on the thoughts. Why? Because I am guessing that you don’t feel good and are searching for answers when the issue may just be not feeling comfortable in your body.
Why focus on the body? A lot of so called negative thoughts are actually symptoms of a body that is out of harmony. Energy gets trapped in the body and since most of us are not in tune with our bodies we don’t notice this until it manifests as thoughts, worries, fears.
Not saying this is your situation but if it is I would like to encourage you not to waste time with spirituality and philosophy as I did when my issues were located in my body. If you want to practice this just observe the sensations in your body and see what they feel like. Notice if they produce thoughts or change into other sensations, notice if they produce emotions or images. See if your mood or negative thoughts change after spending some time doing this. You can think of this as a deeper form of mediation than the observing of thoughts and focusing on a single thing (concentration).

>>24548032 (OP) https://www.sathyasai.org/teachings/vahini/dhyana-vahini

For the fruits of meditation to become obvious the chaff of the mind must be dredged up and discarded. Yes this requires time. Look into doing a Vipassana retreat, they are scattered across the world and while the technique is hardly perfect those three days of breath concentration and seven of sensation-investigation will make certain realities obvious and can serve as a junction point towards whatever investigations of self you find resonant.

Meditation is profound because it is non-conceptual. Be willing to discard thought and word and sign and semantics and rest in nothingness. There is a light in the mind that becomes obscured by our attempts to discover it. When you sit find the place between effort and non-effort and give up hope and unclench not only your fists but the fists of the mind for this is always clenched. All the questions you stated will be satisfied not by the arrival of the answer but by the obliteration of the question itself and in meditation our nature becomes obvious which is force not form and formlessness in which concept nor division holds no part and all is not thing one but nothingness itself.

>>24548218
>Notice if they produce thoughts or change into other sensations, notice if they produce emotions or images
When I focus on my chest it evokes imagery of comeuppance and physical violence. It's as if my body is punishing me for not acting on my purist instincts, even if those instincts lead me to my demise (both societally in the form of prison and biblically / spiritually in the form of sins). But the thing is, these fantasies would surely make me feel guilty if they were actually acted out, so why is my mind fooling me this way?